The Dark Hour is a confusing film set in a post-nuclear apocalypse world of strange creatures, even stranger rules and very compelling characters that you really want to like, if only you could figure out who they were. It is a film that had good bones and a story it definitely wanted to tell but it’s mired in the hows an whys of its own world, making what could have been a great movie simply a good one.
The story of The Dark Hour starts when we meet our main character, an 8 year-old boy named Jesus who narrates the story by way of filming his surroundings and happenings of the bunker he lives in with 9 other people, almost all of whom are adults. The reasons why they live in the bunker are not known to Jesus and, by default, are not known to the audience. From what we can see it seems that the people left in the bunker are trapped there and, possibly, the last people left in what appears to be a much larger complex. They have a hierarchy similar to that of the military and they go about their days educating the two youngest members of the group, Jesus and a teenaged girl called Ana, making food and preparing for the night when strange monsters called The Invisibles come. The Invisibles comes through the complex at random looking for people to “take” and freezing the entire area. There are a number of other threats to the ground in the complex, however. There is a group of people called The Strangers who are diseased former humans, similar to zombies, who will attack at a moment’s notice and, if they touch you, they will infect you, turning you into one of them. In addition to the supernatural threats there is also the dwindling medical, ammunition and food supplies, forcing the group out of their own area and into other places in the complex to resupply. When one member of the team begins to go a little stir crazy and another member dies, the safety of the group is jeopardized.
This movie’s Spanish title is La Hora Fria, or literally The Cold Hour, which would have been a much more accurate title, but that was not the only inconsistency. There were a lot of characters to focus on such that it was almost impossible to form an attachment to any of them. There was also a little too much to be scared of. There was dwindling supplies. There was a threat within the group from an unstable person. There was The Invisibles. There was the Strangers. There was too much. This movie has excellent bones and did want to be good, but it got too bogged down in the rules it had created for its own world for it to be coherent.
The problems with the script are very unfortunate because the acting, set decoration, special effects and, well, everything else was excellent. The CGI on The Invisibles and the makeup on the Strangers was definitely creepy enough to make the audience uncomfortable. The acting was believable and that at least made you want to care about the characters and what was happening but with 9 (and eventually 10) of them, they were too numerous to make a connection with. The design team did an excellent job of creating an immersive world but I would have preferred to see a slightly varied colour palette since the film is very, very dark and, at times, difficult to discern what’s going on, even in a pitch black theatre.
It was additionally disappointing that the supernatural elements were never explained. The Strangers and Invisibles are explained in some very broad strokes, but not enough to garner the fear of the audience, even if initial contacts with them are a little unsettling. With all the other inconsistencies and limitations of the film, this was the one that was the most unfortunate.
Despite the problem with the film I did actually enjoy it, but I was often confused by problems noted above and it was enough to distract me from the good parts. I recommend this as a good film to see for fans of sci-fi, but it’s not accessible to anyone who isn’t both familiar with the genre and patient. I can certainly understand why it was selected for Toronto After Dark, but I also understand that this is not a perfect film and should be watched with that in mind.
Toronto After Dark runs from August 14 to 21, 2009 at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto. Click here for our coverage.
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I found this movie to be incredibly disappointing. Wait, scratch that. Disappointing is not the right word, as the movie was tons better than the trailer. I didn’t exactly go in expecting much. I just wanted so much more (or less – your “too much going on” theory is dead-on). It would make a better book than movie.
Yeah Karen that was really the only way to describe it for me – just too much. I think if they had focused a little more the good parts could have been directed into something wonderful. That theory about it being a better book than a movie is bang on tho. Totally.